Introduction

Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit professor of mathematics at the Roman College (Rome) in the middle of the seventeenth century, is a fascinating figure who still attracts today a great interest. Kircher was interested in a great diversity of subjects about which he published a large number of books. In addition to his books, Kircher organized a museum at the Roman College which presented an image of the world with its many aspects and was visited by many people and maintained a large correspondence with a great variety of persons, among them, kings, noblemen, ecclesiastics, philosophers, and scholars. This work covers the presentation of Kircher’s cosmological vision of the Earth and the Universe, in his three books about the Earth and its interior, the magnetic field as the force that pervades everything, and the journey through of the universe with its heavenly bodies, that for him still had their center at the Earth. In these three books, Kircher presents his vision of the world, mainly from the point of view of science, but also with many other considerations of philosophical and theological character. In Kircher’s works, we find these three approaches presented together in a single unified holistic vision, and in addition, we find also a special interest in the marvelous, even the magic, the occult and esoteric, which for him deserve also his attention and consideration.